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Yahoo buys Tumblr, but promises to change nothing

In Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Tumblr post about her company's purchase of the social media/blogging webste, it doesn’t take long for her to offer reassurances that the old Internet guard won’t come in and totally remake the new kid on the block.

Here’s the second sentence: “We promise not to screw it up.”

Tumblr CEO David Karp (who offered his own post that even included a Tumblr-specific, rather vulgar signoff) will remain in charge of the site, she stressed. In a show of solidarity with the animated-GIF-heavy content of Tumblr, Mayer included one of her own. Tumblr’s “product roadmap” will stay the same, she offered.

Mayer was right to stay on defense in her statement. Before Yahoo’s $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr was even official Monday morning, Tumblr users were voicing their displeasure at the prospect, with several sites cataloguing a few of the more distraught posts, which include pictures of people crying and statements such as, “If Yahoo buys Tumblr, I will delete my blog.”

It’s clear Tumblr’s users feel a real sense of ownership and community on the site. Some expressed worries that Yahoo would put a stop to the posting of pornographic material on Tumblr; others worried that the site’s rampant reappropriation of images and video from movies and TV would be scrutinized.

Yahoo seems intent on assuring users that none of those things will happen, and at least one news outlet, Buzzfeed, has argued that Yahoo’s acquisition of the site is intended to win over the site’s mostly young user base, not alienate them.

But that’s enough words, right? It seems right that we at PR Daily should make our best effort to tell this story in Tumblrese. So without further ado, here’s Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr in five animated GIFs: